Mother Teresa-charity-critics are mental cases!¹³

Some so-called spiritual people sneer at the concept of charity. They say that we have to go to the root cause of ignorance in order to heal the sufferings of humanity. They feel that the answer lies in self-perfection and not in charity. According to their philosophy, the poor and the sick must endure suffering for certain karmic reasons. Therefore, it is God’s responsibility to take care of them, since He created them.

If you carry this philosophy to its inevitable conclusion and say that it is not necessary to provide services for those who suffer, then there should be no doctors or hospitals. There will be no foundation for the existence of medical science.

Fortunately, most spiritual paths include and encompass the ideal of charity in a broad sense. They feel that charity is a part of spirituality because it is based on self-giving. The expansion of our normal consciousness in various ways may take the form of charity. We see that somebody needs our concern, somebody needs treatment, somebody needs love, and we try to offer what we have and what we are lovingly, if not unconditionally.

From the highest point of view, I fully agree that charity and philanthropy are not the answer to alleviate humanity’s sufferings. In order to serve God inside our fellow human beings, we must first know what God’s Will is. The Saviour Christ taught us to pray, “Let Thy Will be done.” There can be no higher prayer than this. It is through prayer and meditation that we will come to realise and know what His Will is. Only a God-realised soul can ask God directly whom he should help and in what way.

But before we achieve this state of oneness with God, we are bound to pass through hundreds of human incarnations. While we are waiting to hear God’s Voice and to receive His inner Messages, must we just wait and do nothing? Suppose we see somebody dying in the street, will we wait for God’s Command before we go and help that person? Will we argue with ourselves and say, “Obviously he deserves this fate. In his previous incarnation he must have done many bad things”?

Where is our conscience? Where is our common sense? Did God not give us a heart to identify ourselves with the suffering of others? If somebody is in dire need of my assistance, will I not go and help that person if I have the capacity? Similarly, when I am in desperate straits, other kind-hearted people will come to my rescue. If we do not help one another like this, then what kind of society are we living in?

Suppose the person who is suffering is a close relative of ours. At that time we do not care for philosophy. When a near and dear one is suffering, we discard our philosophical detachment. We immediately run to help them. We are not interested in knowing the root cause of the problem, which may be something they did in a previous incarnation. We are only concerned with the present. When our mother or father falls ill, we will stay at the hospital round the clock because of our love and concern for them. We pray that God in the form of the doctor will be able to do the needful and cure them.

When we expand our consciousness, we come to see all of humanity as one family. We come to feel that we do not belong just to our immediate family, just to our own little village or to our own country. No, we belong to the whole world and the whole world belongs to us. We claim the whole world as our oneness-family. So if someone is suffering in our larger family, naturally we will try to help that person. The spirituality that makes us shut our heart-door to others is a very narrow kind of spirituality. Genuine spirituality helps us to expand our self-offering.

In Mother Teresa’s case, she went one step further. She saw inside the poor, the sick and the dying the living presence of Jesus Christ. That is why she was able to serve the poorest of the poor with such humility and love. Some self-styled critics of Mother Teresa claim that she did not follow a truly spiritual life. They declare that her life of service cannot be compared to a life of prayer and worship.

Swami Vivekananda, the giant Hindu spiritual figure, fell victim to the same criticism when he urged his brother-disciples to practise the life of service. He told them: If you really love God the Creator, then you must serve God the creation, the suffering humanity.

Mother Teresa’s life of dedicated service to the poor, the sick and the dying was her prayer in action. No one who came into contact with her could fail to observe that Jesus was always on her tongue and in her heart. At every moment, she prayed for God’s Blessings. And God did shower His Blessings upon her in boundless measure.

While it is true that Mother Teresa’s exemplary life embodied charity in its highest form, it is equally true that many people perform acts of charity with an altogether different attitude. If one person has ten dollars and he gives away five pennies to a poor person, he may feel that he has done an act of charity, that he has made a tremendous sacrifice. Or he may donate some discarded, unwanted clothes to those whom he considers to be objects of pity. The clothes may not even be useable, but he will feel that he has done someone a great favour, like a king giving alms to a beggar. Although the king has vast wealth, he gives just a tiny portion of it and he feels that is more than enough.

There is a great difference between charity that is based on limited self-giving and charity that is based on unconditional self-offering. Unconditional self-offering comes from the integral, entire being, whereas limited self-giving comes from an infinitesimal portion of our existence.

In limited self-giving we feel that we are superior and others are inferior. We may pity somebody, but while doing so we remain on the Himalayan heights and we see the person to whom we are showing pity at the bottom of a chasm. We stand millions of miles higher than the heart-breaking reality of the other person.

When charity is based on unconditional self-offering, on the other hand, we feel that the poor and the sick are like our little brothers and sisters. In a family, there can be no superiority and no inferiority. It is all oneness. The older brother will share what he has with his little brother, not because he pities him, but because he has compassion for him. When we show compassion, at that time our whole being becomes one with the suffering of others. If somebody is poverty-stricken and we offer our compassion, we become one with his poverty itself. We just come to him and become one with his problems.

This is what Mother Teresa did on a daily basis. She herself braved unimaginable poverty and hardship in order to become one with the poor people of India. It is a far cry from her self-offering to the charitable donations of big businessmen who are seeking a way to evade taxes. Do they see, like Mother Teresa, the living presence of Jesus Christ inside the poor? Never, never. I do not wish to decry the contributions of wealthy people. There are some who have very large hearts and who genuinely wish to help the world-family to become happy and progressive. By not hoarding their wealth in a selfish way they are definitely elevating the consciousness of mankind and inspiring others to follow their example.

But the utter, unconditional self-offering that we find in the life of Mother Teresa will have no equal. I am reminded of an incident that occurred when Mother Teresa first opened up her Home for the Dying, Nirmal Hriday, at Kalighat in Calcutta. Some members of the local community stood against her. They believed that she was trying to convert everybody from Hinduism to Christianity. The local police chief agreed to go and investigate the complaints. As soon as he entered Nirmal Hriday, he saw that Mother Teresa was bending over a dying man and pulling out the worms from his body. The stench was so unbearable that the police chief hastily left the building. When he returned to the people who had lodged the complaint, he said, “You are all so undivine! You talk about God, but you do nothing to help humanity. If I ask Mother Teresa to leave, will any of you take her place and look after this dying man? Never! I do not see her as a mere human being. If she is not God, then who is God?”

Mother Teresa taught us that if somebody is standing at our heart-door, we should not allow that person to wait outside like a beggar. We should immediately embrace him and give him what we have and what we are. Our complete self-offering to the divine in him is nothing other than charity in its purest sense of the term, bordering on real spirituality.

I strongly feel that Mother Teresa’s inspiration-light will spread to countless people in various levels of society the world over. As they come to learn about the life and work of this Himalayan-height saint, they will be filled with the inspiration to think more of others than of themselves and to offer their heart’s boundless love and concern to each and every member of our oneness-world-family.

To conclude, Princess Diana also sailed in the same boat as Mother Teresa towards the same destination, the Golden Shore. Alas, Princess Diana’s life-tree was snapped before it could reach its highest height with foliage, flowers, fragrance and nourishing fruits. No wonder why Mother Teresa most affectionately and most proudly claimed Diana as her daughter. When Mother and daughter met for the last time on June 18th in the Bronx, New York, their mutual love and affection can only be felt and never be described.